Singapore’s economy will likely rebound strongly from last year’s recession as surging export demand fuels manufacturing, according to a central bank survey of analysts.
The city-state’s GDP is expected to grow 9 percent this year, according to the median forecast of 19 economists in the quarterly survey, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said yesterday.
In the previous survey in March, analysts had expected the economy would grow 6.5 percent this year.
Singapore’s economy — which relies on trade, finance and tourism — will likely be led this year by a 16.7 percent expansion in manufacturing as non-oil exports soar 17.8 percent, the analysts said.
The government boosted its growth forecast for this year in April to a range of 7 to 9 percent from 4.5 to 6.5 percent as Singapore emerged from a recession last year. The economy expanded 15.5 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier as pharmaceutical and electronic production surged.
“The exceptionally good result in the first half was helped by a comparison to a low base,” said Irvin Seah, an economist at DBS bank in Singapore. “We’ll likely see another double-digit growth figure in the second quarter.”
DBS raised this week its growth forecast for this year to 10.3 percent from 9 percent.
Growth will likely slow in the second half because of weaker export demand from Asia as regional policymakers tighten monetary policy and wind down stimulus spending programs, Seah said.
Analysts forecast that the economy would grow 9.4 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, 6 percent in the third and 5.5 percent next year, the central bank said.
Inflation is expected to rise to 2.8 percent this year, the unemployment rate will be 2 percent and the exchange rate will average S$1.356 against the greenback, little changed from the March survey, the analysts said.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
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